Development office’s demise led to city loss of grant funds

Anniston’s loss last spring of federal funds totaling $569,794 to help prevent homelessness was caused by factors that began sometime before authorities actually took the money away.

In 2007, the city hired Clarence Williams to manage the Community Development Block Grant fund, money delivered through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The program, in which Anniston has participated for decades, funds a number of housing-related activities, including a loan program for low-income residents to bring their homes up to code.

Williams’ contract specified that he was to receive $60,000 per year to act as the coordinator of the CDBG program. Former city manager George Monk was working for Anniston at the time Williams was hired and was Williams’ supervisor, he said.

“One of the things that he got excited about was the possibility of bringing other programs to Anniston through other grants,” Monk said. “I gave him the green light.”

When Williams secured the new grants, he also brought a new contract to the City Council asking for additional money to manage the grants, City Manager Don Hoyt said recently. Each time the contract was brought up, the council either tabled the request or turned it down, Hoyt said.

When the council turned down his request for more money, Hoyt said, Williams refused to manage the grants. That’s not a good thing to happen in the realm of federal grants — authorities like to know someone is handling their money according to its original purpose.

Repeated attempts by The Star to locate Williams, who resigned in May, have been unsuccessful.

Darlene Emory worked with Williams on the CDBG fund. She resigned in April before the problems in the Community Development Department came to light. Emory said she was there when Williams handed the responsibility for managing the homeless grants to Hoyt. Williams handed him the paperwork and the timeline and Hoyt should have taken care of it, she said.

“This one is on the city,” Emory said. “They sat there and did not do anything, nothing with all that money. That’s how they lost it.”

She wasn’t sure when Williams handed everything over to Hoyt, but Finance Director Danny McCullars wrote in an e-mail that it was sometime in January 2010, four months after the grant was allocated.

The way Emory sees it, the problem stems from the contract dispute.

“That program was going to entail a lot of work,” Emory said. “All it boiled down to is they did not want to give Clarence and I a raise.”

Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs spokesman Jim Plott said the grant money was pulled because Anniston wasn’t filing the required paperwork to the department.

“ADECA did receive letters from the Anniston program, but that was after the HPRP program had been terminated after no documentation had been received in the eight months since the funding was awarded,” Plott said by e-mail.

The department sent several notices and e-mails to the city before it finally pulled the money on April 14. Most went to Williams, but the final notice of the recall was sent also to Hoyt and Mayor Gene Robinson, Plott said.

The recall happened at the same time two women came to the council complaining that problems with the CDBG program had left them homeless, prompting the council members to request a HUD investigation. The next day, at the request of HUD, the city closed the Community Development office and posted a police guard at the door to ensure the records would not be tampered with. The city has received no findings from the investigation, Hoyt said.

The city has since hired Development Solutions, a Bessemer-based consulting company, to manage the CDBG program.

Councilman David Dawson said he wants the council to solidify protocol for the Community Development Department to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

“Nobody was looking over, you know, that department,” Dawson said. “There are just some things that went on wrong during that.”

Someone, either the city manager or some other department head, is going to have to oversee the department, Dawson said.

Dawson would also like to talk to Anniston’s congressmen to see if the lost funding can be restored.

As it is, the “lost” grant money isn’t going to waste: Officials say it made its way to a Homeless Coalition organization serving Mobile and Baldwin counties.